


Unlucky State of the Other

by BabySnoopy



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Neighbors, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Comfort/Angst, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fluff, antisoulmate au more likely, how to tag, jungwoo being 4d, more angst maybe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-26
Updated: 2019-05-26
Packaged: 2020-03-17 16:13:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18968737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BabySnoopy/pseuds/BabySnoopy
Summary: when soulmates are more burdening than beautiful to you and jungwoo reinforces that belief





	Unlucky State of the Other

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr my dudes: skydivingstars.tumblr.com

It starts on one of those grouchy mornings when you wake up just a couple minutes before your alarm. The numbers on the digital clock read 6.56 a.m. and it elicits a groan as you throw your head back onto the pillow before mustering some of that usual self-discipline to get up. It is only after you turn on your kettle to make coffee did you realise that today was a Saturday.

As you’re contemplating on going back to sleep, any hint of drowsiness escapes you when you hear something suddenly crash from the apartment next door again. It must be a new record for Jungwoo, this being the fifth time this week in which you wondered if you should go over and check if he was okay.

This happened often enough for you to ignore it. Though it’s usually the impact of objects hitting against the wooden floor boards that rang through the isolated silence of living alone, occasionally it’d be something more entertaining, like Jungwoo following through a 15 minute aerobic class from Youtube or a failed cooking attempt indicated by the smoke alarm going off.

But this time, there is a foreboding silence that follows the noise and it builds up like the suspense of a horror movie, creeping into your own apartment like something terrible was looming and suddenly your mind is jumping to all sorts of conclusions. Unable to shake the uneasiness, you make your way next door.

You don’t know too much about Jungwoo, sort of met him passing through the halls mostly, but he was a kind enough fellow to help you with neighbourly favours like lending you sugar or keeping your delivered packages when you weren’t home. Judging by the amount of noise alone though, you’d like to think that perhaps he just lived a very eccentric and clumsy life. Or on the other hand, he might just be really obnoxious. That could explain some of his really loud friends he has over sometimes - loud enough to know one of their names was Lucas.

His door is just three steps away from yours. You knock once and take a step back but you’re caught off guard when the door immediately swings open, your hand flying right to your chest in shock, as though Jungwoo was standing right behind the door waiting for a knock.

“Good morning!” He beams and you think this is the first time you’ve ever met anyone who was this excited to be awake this early on a weekend.

“Morning Jungwoo,” you try your best not to sound disgruntled. “I just heard something crash. Is everything okay?”

“That... might’ve been the vase I knocked over.” A sheepish grin overtakes his face now though it falls short of embarrassment. “It’s all good though! I’m building a house of cards, wanna help?”

You’ve never actually entered Jungwoo’s apartment so to your absolute horror, Jungwoo pulls you in by your thumb without waiting for your response. It is only then did you notice his peculiar getup; a matching sky blue tracksuit with pink striped socks. Though you don’t suppose you’re doing any better with your sheep-patterned pyjama pants and your jumper that read ‘not in the moooood’ accompanied with a picture of a cow. You wouldn’t blame him if he mistook you for a farm fanatic.

He closes the door behind you and you notice that his apartment is exactly a mirrored layout of yours. Sure enough the vase, along with other table decor, is there on the floor seemingly untouched since its fall. All the furniture is so cohesively minimalist that you might think you were looking at a showroom but what catches your eye the most, or what seems most out of place, is the huge painting of a cartoon character... Its name barely on the tip of your tongue. You’re not sure if it was meant to be a joke because the painting itself is lined with an elegant gold frame like it came right out of a prestigious art museum.

“A friend made that for me! Cool, right? He thinks I look a lot like Snoopy.” You realise you hadn’t said anything since entering his apartment but you snap your fingers when he mentions Snoopy. Afterwards, you couldn’t stop your gaze from travelling back and forth between the man and the painting, seeing the uncanny resemblance almost immediately.

“Here,” Jungwoo says, now whispering, as he slips an Ace of Spades into your palm, jutting his chin towards the three-layered house of cards that stood atop his coffee table in the middle of the room. You didn’t even notice it when you first came in. It might’ve made for a passable piece of contemporary art.

If you would reiterate, conversations with Jungwoo in the halls never really surpassed the usual ‘how are you’ or ‘have a good day’ so it comes as humorous to you that you were now standing here in his apartment about to help him finish his house of cards at 7 a.m. on a Saturday.

The intensity of this entire scenario played out like a cheap comedy; both of you frozen in place, Jungwoo leaning with his hands on his knees and you holding your breath for no reason at all. As your hand hovers over the neatly structured house, you suddenly become aware of the fact that you had absolutely no idea how you supposed to do this. Your hands were far too shaky and the more you leaned in, the more you were convinced you were going to blow the whole thing over with a sneeze.

You look up at Jungwoo with hesitance but he if understood your expression at all, he showed no sign of concern as he nods fervently. You take a long, deep breath and lower the card onto the surface and...

The minuscule sound of paper cards toppling over each other was somehow loud enough to echo throughout the apartment, your hand still hanging over the, now deconstructed, house of cards.

“I am so sorry,” you start, and although it was a soulless remark, you really did feel bad for coming in here and ruining something that seemed like he worked really hard on. Jungwoo didn’t move a muscle, didn’t so much as blink and for a second you thought he was about to cry. Instead, he throws his head back in laughter, slapping his thigh repeatedly. Here he was, humoured and laughing whereas you stood guilty and perplexed.

“Don’t look so sad! They’re just cards,” then he bends down and tidies up the mess. “Alright, I should probably get some sleep now or I’m going to have a headache.” You weren’t sure if he was talking to you or at you but now the feeling of being an intruder in his home settles. “Thanks for checking up on me, by the way! We should do this again.”

Before you know it, you’re sitting back in your apartment trying to make sense of the last fifteen minutes with your neighbour Kim Jungwoo. Then it dawns on you that that was the first time he’s touched you, so you hurriedly look over the thumb that Jungwoo grabbed to pull you into his place. Examining your finger closely, you conclude that there is no mark. You sigh, feeling relieved that your soulmate was not Jungwoo.

* * *

 

The best types of friendships play out in the most unexpected ways and Jungwoo becomes more familiar to you than the lines on the back of your hand. You know that you both became quite the pair when your mum kept egging you to check for the golden mark, insisting that perhaps it was a teeny, tiny speck under your thumbnail. You brush her off, reminding her that you didn’t really care. You were just happy to have someone close like Jungwoo.

Now the thin walls have become a useful tool in your friendship, a commodity as Jungwoo likes to call it, for if you ever needed the other, all it took was a good, loud yelingl. Forget cell phones - this was much more effective. 

“SPIDER!” You heard him scream once and you laugh at such a sudden sound before hurrying out and into Jungwoo’s apartment. Neither of you even locked your doors anymore when you knew the other was home, this mutual trust built on a pinky-promised pact that states if you hear any suspicious sounds from next door, assume it is someone breaking in and run to the rescue with a weapon big enough to knock the person out.

When you close Jungwoo’s door behind you, you turn around and collide almost directly into his body, unaware that he had crept up on you like that. His t-shirt is slightly wet but his clamped, wet hair with droplets dripping from its ends remind you of your earl grey teabags you make in the morning when you didn’t feel like coffee.

“You have to help me. The spider. Shower curtain. Please,” he shakes both your shoulders with every syllable and you were so tempted to laugh at his desperation but spiders were Jungwoo’s ultimate kryptonite and you weren’t that mean to make fun of him like that.

You rush right over to the bathroom and Jungwoo was so scared he didn’t even have time to turn the shower off. You find the innocent, long-legged creature dangling from a web. You scoop it up and walk out of the bathroom, across the living room, and toss it out onto the balcony so Jungwoo knew where it went.

When you slide the glass door close, Jungwoo is standing distant, his arms held together over his chest, the way he usually does when he’s scared.

“It’s gone, okay?” You hold up your open palms as proof and he flinches slightly before coming over closer to you, studying your hands thoroughly as if you were a magician that tricked him into thinking you made the spider ‘disappear’. You turn your hands over. “Nothing here too, Jungwoo.”

He lets out a loud exhale as though he’s been holding his breath the entire time. “Okay, thank you. Now get out I need to finish my shower.”

“Yeah, you’ve still got shampoo in your hair,” you chuckle, reaching up to scoop some of the foam still present in his hair. He laughs as well, an airy full sound before he bends forward slightly to blow the bubbles away, his lips just inches from your skin.

* * *

 

You start blaming your mum for making you think about soulmates more often than you usually did for it was a topic you never really wanted to ponder over. It was much too over-glorified, you thought, but you that also might be the bitterness within you talking because you hadn’t met them yet. Oddly enough, you were fairly certain that the connection you made so easily with Jungwoo had to be the same one people felt when they found their soulmates. It’s not as though you felt like he is the one, whatever that means, but there was a comfort you found in him that you’d never found elsewhere.

It is when you’re watching Jungwoo on your apartment floor, reading an instruction manual to put together a cabinet, did you recall your mum’s words from a past phone call. That the ultimate soulmate activity, as she termed it, was to build Ikea furniture together. You almost audibly grumble when you heard her voice so clear in your head. It wasn’t your fault that putting together furniture was impossible to you.

“It’s really not that hard,” Jungwoo says, now holding two variants of a screw in his fingers. He’s holding them up together to see which one he needs.

“It is,” you respond, matter-of-factly. You watch him intently, sitting on his knees with the manual splayed in front of him. His lips move slowly, mouthing the words he read and then subtly smiling when he’s matched the right part. Something knots itself over and over in your stomach and you wonder since when you paid this much attention to such minute details of him.

Jungwoo gets up and moves a wooden plank over, then tightens a couple screws there and your cabinet is built and ready. He starts moving the entire structure now and you get up to help him but realise that he had no trouble moving it himself. It was almost graceful actually, and you roll your eyes at how pathetic that sounded in your head.

“In the bedroom right?” Jungwoo croaks under the weight of the cabinet. You nod and quickly make sure that nothing is in Jungwoo’s way as he slowly makes his way to your bedroom.

You show him where to settle down the cabinet and he grunts at the force of finally being able to put it down. After dusting off his hands, he stretches his back by twisting it from from his waist, simultaneously taking in the smaller details of your room. His eyes then notice the suitcase you have open.

“Oh! That trip you talked about is this weekend?”

You nod, excitement taking over you. You’ve been planning this trip with your best friend for months. “Which reminds me, can you water my plants when I’m gone?” 

Jungwoo scoffs as walks out of your room, helping himself to a glass of water in the kitchen. He always makes sure to use that one mug with a cat on it and you’re not sure why, but the mug is officially Jungwoo’s and he’s the only one that ever uses it.

“What makes you think I’m going to remember to water your plants?”

“Because I’m going to make you those brownies you really like.”

As expected, the offer leaves Jungwoo to stare at you with his mouth slightly agape. “The double chocolate chip ones? With the Hershey chocolate bars in them?” Jungwoo might even be willing to commit a felony for you if you were going to make him those brownies.

You smile at such eagerness. “Yeah.”

* * *

 

As destiny would have it, or perhaps just your rotten luck, you don’t end up going on your trip. The morning you were meant to leave, you receive a phone call from your best friend bearing the bad news, that the trip needed to be cancelled, in favour of her good news, that she unexpectedly met her soulmate.

You know you were being difficult when you hung up on her and proceeded to throw your phone onto the edge of the bed since your initial reaction was that you didn’t really care for her soulmate. But as soon as the thoughts swim in your head, you feel regret hang over you for being so childish in your response. You make a mental note to apologise to her later. After all, it should be a happy occasion.

In need of a real pick-me-up, you yell Jungwoo’s name weakly, almost expecting that he wouldn’t hear you, but even hearing the faint thud of his footsteps rushing out was enough to make you feel a bit better.

When he peeks into your apartment from the doorway, he asks, “I thought you left for your trip?”

“Long story. Want to hear me rant?”

He enters your apartment completely now, looking comfortable in the bunny slippers he had on. “Well, if I don’t hear it now, I’d probably hear you screaming about it to yourself later.”

“True,” you comment, patting the spot next to you on the couch so he can join you.

The entire time that you explained the situation you had to go back and keep clarifying that you did indeed understand where your friend was coming from but that you also really couldn’t. It was a two-part slap in the face on your part; the first being the cancellation of a trip you’ve planned for months, and second, the reasoning behind it.

“I just... I can’t believe she would put me aside just cause she finally met her soulmate. He’s going to be here when we get back, couldn’t it have waited?” You were running your mouth quicker than you’ve ever spoken in front of Jungwoo before, all the words coming out unfiltered.

“What’s with these soulmates anyway? Even my mum can’t shut up about them. My parents found each other when they were in primary school. Like, I’m sure it’s an adorable story for them to tell everyone but I’m 20 and I still haven’t met him yet. What if he’s not even in this country? Or this continent? Heck, what if he’s floating about in space because he’s an astronaut? He could be dead for all I know-”

“You’d know if he was dead.” It wasn’t until he spoke that you realise Jungwoo hadn’t said a word throughout your entire ramble. His face darkens in a way you’ve never seen and his voice is somber, carrying a type of pain that could shoot through your veins the same way it would have if he had yelled.

A whisper escapes you, suddenly feeling incredibly distant with the one you called your best friend. “What?”

Slowly, he lifts the hem of his shirt, pulling it upwards until you could see it; a grey mark about the size of your palm, tattooed inelegantly onto his chest. You note it is on the left side of his body and you fought hard to fight the lump in your throat. Jungwoo’s soulmate died of a heart attack.

“I’m so sorry,” was all you could manage. You didn’t know what was the right thing to say or if you should have said anything at all. You’d only heard rumours about what happens whenever a grey mark emerges on your body instead of the pretty gold one. You’d never met anyone who’s gone through it themselves but you knew that it physically hurt. That you felt exactly the pain your soulmate did before they left.

“It’s fine. It was two years ago anyway.” He pulls his shirt back down and crosses his arms, avoiding your eyes. When you don’t say anything because you’re not sure if you should, he continues. “The whole thing is dumb anyway. I mean,” he pauses and you want to pretend you don’t notice the way he chokes. “Why do I need to miss her and feel it in my chest when I didn’t even know her?”

When words didn’t work and you couldn’t bear to let the silence enshroud the both of you here, you did the second most instinctive thing; you pulled Jungwoo into you. Your arms flew around his neck in a grasp that forced him to know that you were here and you slowly laid back onto the couch, letting him settle on top of you. His head is buried in your chest, your fingers comb through every strand of his hair. It hurt you to feel the droplets of burning tears seeping through your shirt and onto your skin.

He resists your embrace at first but eventually gives in, snaking his arms under your waist so that he could hold onto you just as tight.

You stayed like this for as long as he needed, holding on because you didn’t know how else to comfort someone who’s been hiding so much pain. You felt so selfish and stupid thinking about the entire time you rambled on about soulmates. You tighten your arms slightly, as though you were afraid that the moment you loosened your grip, he might slip away like a daydream.

But you woke up later on with a chill, your arms empty and your body in your bed. If you had known that that was the last time you’d see Jungwoo, or known that you’ve been hungry to hold him like that all this time, you wouldn’t have let yourself fall asleep, ever.

You don’t know how Jungwoo manages to avoid you for weeks when you literally lived right next door to him. It’s like he’s calculated all of his movements perfectly to make sure that he never ran into you. Or maybe he was spending his nights elsewhere. He didn’t answer your knocks nor did he ever reply your texts. Losing sleep had become a habit when you were ruminating over what you had done to mess things up. But eventually, repeatedly being shut out by someone who was still hurting took a toll on you too, and sooner or later you grew exhausted.

* * *

 

Doyoung invited you to a barbecue at his place and you really should have made him list down the entire guest list before deciding on coming or not. If you had done so, you wouldn’t be standing here in the doorway, your eyes locked in on the only familiar face in this crowd. Your knees immediately buckle in nervousness and you stiffen when he notices you too. He tilts his head slightly before getting up. He looks different. His hair is a lighter shade of brown, more caramel than coffee but it didn’t help that you loved the taste of both equally. To your surprise, he makes his way towards you. Your heart is beating in your throat now and if Jungwoo felt any semblance of it too, he didn’t show it.

“Hey. What are you doing here?” He spoke with a nonchalance you could only wish you’d be able to feign. But before you say anything in response, you feel someone else’s arm thrown over your shoulders.

“You know Jungwoo?” You turn to see your good friend Doyoung and you’re almost relieved that he swooped in at such a critical moment.

“He’s my, uh... neighbour.” Unlike Jungwoo, you weren’t very good at masking how you really felt. Anger seeps into the undertones of your voice and it seems to trigger something within Jungwoo too. You notice it in the way he straightens his stance as if in defence. Doyoung, thank goodness for his quick wit, picked up on the growing tension immediately.

“Right...” Was all he could contribute though. “Do you want to get me to get you some pizza? There’s-”

“That’s okay Doyoung, I can get it myself,” you interrupt. Then back at Jungwoo, “it was nice seeing you,” before you walk off towards the kitchen. It wasn’t very impactful, you’d admit but you’re sure that if you stuck around him long enough, you were bound to make a scene.

Knowing that Jungwoo was somewhere in the same house lingering made you feel more suffocated than you thought you would be and you couldn’t stay as late as you promised Doyoung.

“It’s because of Jungwoo, isn’t it?” Doyoung asks you bluntly as you zip up your purse and swing it over your shoulder.

“Doyoung, stop butting in my business.”

“Alright, fine but it’s late already. I’ll drive you back once everyone leaves. Can you hold on for another hour or two?”

But before you can answer him, a voice speaks up from behind you both. “It’s okay, I’ll walk with her.” You turn around to see Jungwoo, hands in his pockets as he walks over, again looking indifferent and irritating.

Because he had made you the offer, you expected him to strike some friendly small talk as he followed you out of the house and you were more than ready with your own arsenal of snide remarks to release all that you couldn’t say to him for the past couple of months. Instead, Jungwoo keeps to himself. He walks at a pace that almost causes you to jog just to keep up but for some reason it still feels excruciatingly slow with this silence.

Finally, you notice the intersection just a couple blocks from your apartment building and although your pride has been weighing you down and stopping you from sounding anything other than cold in front of Jungwoo, you figure that if you didn’t speak now, you might not ever get a chance again.

“Can we talk?” You didn’t mean for your voice to break or for the words to come out so quiet. The pedestrian light turns green but Jungwoo doesn’t cross the road. He turns to look at you at last, his expression softening at the sight. You want to melt, being at the receiving end of such subtlety, but you know that it’s a look tainted with the sadness you had no means of comforting.

“What’s there to talk about?”

“Jungwoo,” you take a step closer now, testing the waters to see if he would retreat. When he stands his ground, hands still stuffed into the pockets of his jeans, you take another step. There was no need to beat around the bush with him so you let the words tumble out of you blunt. “You were my best friend.”

It is those words that cause him to pull away from your gaze. “I can’t just be your friend.”

You didn’t expect those words to leave his lips so easily, but your heart is hammering louder than the engines of the cars that drove by. The streets are glistening from that after rain glow and a newfound confidence bursts through your veins. It’s the kind of strength that you’re able to find when you’re with him, something you haven’t felt in a while.

“Then we’ll be more,” you try, hesitantly reaching out to hold onto his wrist. You’ve never been so shameless in a confession but you’d be a fool not to know that he surely felt something too. He doesn’t back away from you, but he looks up when your fingertips graze his skin and his head inclines slightly as he reaches up to brush a couple stray strands behind your ear.

“But you’re going to meet your soulmate.” He retreats his hand but not before barely ghosting his forefinger down your cheek, then he gently pushes your hand off of his wrist. “I’m not going to ever put you in a situation where you have to choose between someone else and your soulmate.”

“Jungwoo,” your voice comes out weak. “You’re not just someone else to me.”

“And I’m also not your soulmate.” The worst is how calm he sounds, as though he’s spent too much time putting this speech together and being able to deliver it without even a single falter in any of his words. Like he’s accepted the cruel fate he was destined to face and is living his life heedlessly. “You’re going to feel it when you meet him, okay? But instead of pain, instead of feeling a heart attack that doesn’t kill you, you’re going to feel love and you’re going to feel warmth.

And when you do, when you feel that, what am I supposed to do?” You felt helpless at the truth he spoke but upon seeing your eyes turn glassy, Jungwoo wraps his arms around you and it urges a sob to escape you even more. “I’d rather watch you be with the person you’re meant for from a distance, than to know what being loved by you is like knowing someday it’ll have to stop.”

His tries to let go of his arms and you’re certain he’s done with his monologue but you don’t let him go, you couldn’t let him have the last word. “Jungwoo, I don’t care about some stupid soulmate. I choose you. I want you.”

It’s a selfish decision, you know it in the back of your head every single day, but you were willing to learn how to live with that guilt if that meant you could still hold Jungwoo every night. It takes you a while to convince him though. He sleeps beside you still holding back and from time to time, you notice an empty, vacant look that he doesn’t hide from you anymore. But you scoot over to get closer to him when you sleep, and you do the most you can to make him laugh and giggle till his cheeks hurt. You know you can’t make that mark on his chest disappear but you also know it’s not your job to. So you make do with what you could.

You spend some nights apologising to your soulmate out there, occasionally wondering if things were okay on that end. But before you decide on the emptiness of your words, Jungwoo calls your name back to bed.


End file.
